I’ve never paid attention to privacy policies before, until recently I had a few minutes to kill so I read one. I was on Facebook and reading the privacy policy shocked me. Anything you post on Facebook is not your property and any text, photos, videos, etc are not solely your property anymore once you relinquish it to Facebook. You might say, “Who cares?”. You should care and here’s the science behind all of it. You may say that I’m speculating or making wild assumptions about privacy on social media, but you can take anything I say with a grain of salt if you are so inclined. I only issue this information because you need to know what’s going on in the background, the sinister goings-on in the background without you having any idea that’s happening.

Keep in mind when on social media that your local police are keeping tabs on you and everyone else in the area. The reason why they do this is if they notice a trend of certain keywords stemming from a certain area, they know to plant cars close by if something does happen and they can respond much quicker. Also keep in mind that search warrants are not needed from Facebook and Google+ for the Police to do extra snooping on you without your knowledge. Also, Twitter requires law enforcement to give a search warrant and Twitter is required by their privacy policy to inform you when a search warrant has been issued on your account. Facebook and Google+ do not have this requirement.

Law Enforcement have a special API (Application Programming Interface) or backend into Facebook and Google+ that allows Law Enforcement agencies to show to them more details than regular people. This means if your Facebook is locked down and private, this API they use overlooks the privacy settings you have on your account. It also overrides closed groups and pages as well. Also, certain employment agencies have this API as well for background checks on potential employees companies are thinking of hiring. For a small fee, companies can pull all social media posts you’ve made in order for them to make a determination to hire you or not so again, regardless of your privacy settings, this method overrides all privacy settings.

My determination of all of this is just not to use social media at all, however if you must use social media, Twitter is the best one so far but still.. the saying goes, never write on a piece of paper you don’t want the world to see.